In a post-nature future the unconscious mind will be the last wilderness. This proposition has come to describe and inform a body of work which I started while on residency at the Nordic Artists' Centre Dale, Norway in early 2016, funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Culture. Being Swedish, but having lived in Ireland since 2004, I still identify very strongly with the Scandinavian landscape, which I explore and document through walks, photographs and journal entries. Coming from a flat southern Swedish forest landscape, the relationship I forged with the mountains surrounding the fjord community
of Dale was new to me, but the forest was familiar. Influenced by Jungian psychology, existentialism and Utopian/Dystopian science fiction, my work uses landscape as a metaphor for the exploration of the human psyche, while also dealing with ideas about wilderness and solitude and how the yearning for an authentic life may be no more than a construct. I have previously used the theatre as a metaphor for constructed reality by presenting objects with the surreal quality of being made in the likeness of something, yet falling short
of true semblance, and by considering the landscape as a stage onto which we project our own personality. This has been expanded on further in the film piece 'Tonight at the Magic Theatre', with a soundtrack by Sofia Ek. Theatre sets are also referenced in the gallery space through a large-scale forest installation which compliments the film. Alongside images of my artworks and production stills, this publication contains a text by Sue Rainsford titled 'and the trees, too, were melting' which further explains my working methods and influences.
Cecilia Danell
